Claudia Rankine is the author of four collections of poetry–Plot, The End of the Alphabet, and Nothing in Nature is Private–and, most recently, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. She is co-editor, with Goddard MFA in Creative Writing faculty member Juliana Spahr, of American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language. She teaches in the writing program at the University of Houston.